Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 13 - The Diamonds of Ghost Bayou (5 page)

The fork narrowed and swung into a wide bend. I spotted the
Golden Crystal Casino as we went around the bend, a sprawling, six-story glass and brick showplace, on the west end of
which was a mile-and-a-half racetrack with grandstands.

“In there,” he said, pointing to a second fork that curved back
to the right into the casino’s marina. Around two dozen boats
were moored, most in the forty- to fifty-foot Grady White or
Trophy class, far removed from the nineteen-footer we were
bouncing about in.

I glanced over the boats, failing to spot the yellow Stratos. “I
don’t see it.”

Valsin gestured to a tan metal building at the end of one ramp
of the mooring docks. “There. In the boat shed.’-‘

We motored slowly up the short waterway and eased to a halt
in front of the shed. Just as he said, a yellow Stratos sat rocking
on the water in one of the stalls. I looked up at him. “How do
you know for sure?”

He touched his middle finger to his chest. “Me, I know. I see
that boat many times. This be the one.” He pointed to a ten-inchlong scar in the transom. “That how I know.”

Diane’s face was taut with fear. I leaned over and patted her
hand gripping the console. “Everything’s all right. We’re going
back now. Okay?”

She forced a weak smile.

After backing up, I headed for the bayou.

During the run back to the Naquins’, I asked Valsin about his
trips into the swamps.

He trapped and hunted while his brothers crabbed and fished.
Above the purr of the powerful Mercury outboard, he added, “I
see much from back in the swamp. Those in the boat, that not be
the first time they go to the house.” He shrugged. “Three times
in the last two months, I see them two.”

Diane glanced at me, alarm evident in her eyes.

We pulled up to the pier at his place, and he invited us in for
a shrimp boil. “Mes amis, the shrimp-it is delicious. And the
potatoes. They be soft and hot, and the corn-” He rolled his
eyes and shook his. “Delicieux.”

Had I been alone, I would have taken him up on the offer, but
we needed to get back to the hospital. “Thanks,” I said. “Maybe
another time. Her husband is in the hospital,” I added, not wanting them to feel slighted.

I had already made my plans for the evening. As soon as I
got Diane back to the hospital, I planned on paying the Golden
Crystal Casino a visit.

After we pulled away from the Naquin pier, Diane looked around
at me sharply and said, “Don’t ever do that to me again, you
hear?”

Her words surprised me. “Do what?” I was truly puzzled.

“I was so scared of those people, I thought I would faint.”

I held my temper. “Come on, Diane. I grew up with those
kinds of folks. They’re good, decent people.”

She shivered. “I don’t care. You can’t tell what people like
that are going to do. Why, I thought that last one was going to
cut our throats and dump us in the swamp. No one would have
ever found us”

I started to snap back, but I reminded myself that even in
high school she had always felt she was better than everyone
else. Coolly, I replied, “I’m sorry. Next time I go out, I’ll drop
you off at the hospital first, okay?” I added the last remark with
a hint of bitterness.

“Fine with me,” she snapped, mollified.

I fumed for a few minutes, and then in a level voice I said,
“Tell me something. Why did you let Jack buy this place if you
feel that way?”

“I’ve always felt that way. You know that.”

“I figured you might have changed in the last few years.”

“Not that way.”

“So? Why did you let Jack buy this place?”

“Because,” she replied, “he said if I went along with him, we
could take the Winter Tour in Europe this year. Christmas
in Munich, the canals in Venice.” She drew a deep breath. “So
I agreed. After all, it’s just a vacation house. He promised we
wouldn’t spend more than a couple of weeks here whenever we
came over.” She hesitated. “Besides, Jack will get tired of it like
he does all his other toys. I give him a year or so.”

In some ways she was a snob, just like in some ways I was a
slob. Even as a child she had always dreamed of a better life. I
couldn’t blame her. What is it they say? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

In the last year or so since she and Jack married, I had often
chastised myself for thinking that the only reason she’d married
Jack was because he had come into eight million dollars. Maybe
I shouldn’t have been so hard on myself. Still, they did get
along remarkably well. And Jack was happy. Who was Ito judge?

Perhaps beneath that balding bowling ball of a man who once
did comic gigs on Sixth Street in Austin, she saw the brooding
charm and sophistication of a New Age Cary Grant. Maybe that’s
what she saw, not the eight million.

You bet, I told myself ruefully.

Jack was awake and alert. His bruises were starting to turn a
sickly purple and yellow. His clenched teeth garbled his words,
frustrating him.

I stood back as Diane leaned over him and touched her lips
to his forehead. She caressed his pudgy cheek with her hand.
“How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

“Ready to get out of here, that’s how,” he replied.

I grinned at him. “You ain’t the prettiest thing I’ve seen lately,
old buddy.”

He winked at me. “Maybe not, but I’ll get better. You’ll always
look like a donkey’s rear end.”

We all laughed, and the truth is, I was surprised at just how
much more energy he showed. “Doc been in?”

“Just left. Says I’m fine. CT scan showed nothing wrong in
my head. “

Teasing, I replied, “Missing brain didn’t bother him, huh?”

He muttered an amicable curse. “Says if I keep doing like I
am, I can go home in another couple of days. They’ll arrange for
a home-health nurse to drop in on me.”

“Sounds good to me.”

He eased his right arm over his rotund belly, opening his hand.
“Thanks for coming over, Tony. You don’t know how much I appreciate it.”

I squeezed his hand. “No problem.” I glanced at Diane. “After
I take your wife to supper, I’ll drop her off back here. I have a
couple errands to run.”

“I’m not hungry,” she said quickly. “Besides, there’s the cafeteria.” She smiled coolly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Whatever you say.” Reluctantly, I asked, “You going to spend
the night at the house or up here?”

She smiled at Jack. “Here.” She indicated the La-Z-Boy recliner in the corner. “I’ll be fine right there.”

A sense of guilt washed over me. Maybe I was too full of myself. After all, that night back in San Antonio when she made a
pass at me, she’d had too many bourbon neats or martinis or
whatever she was drinking. “You two need anything, call. You
have my cell number.”

After leaving the hospital, I pulled into a convenience store,
Doquet’s Stop N Shop, and filled the Silverado tank. Just as I
was finishing, a rusty 1949 Chevrolet pickup rattled in. Augustus
J. Rouly. He gave me a gap-toothed grin through the windshield
as he parked. He clambered out and slammed the door. “Howdy,
boy. See you stayed away from the loup-garou!”

“Stayed inside and locked the door,” I replied lightly.

He slipped the nozzle into the gas tank and began filling.
“That’s the smart thing to do”

Glancing over his shoulder, I saw that the bed of his pickup
was empty. “What happened to all the scrap metal you had?”

He shrugged. “Sold it up in Lafayette.” His eyes glittered slyly.
“Not bad money. Folks around here, they is always throwing
away iron and aluminum. Been doing it forever.”

“You’ve lived out on the river all your life, huh?”

He cut his eyes in my direction. They were bright and perceptive. “Over eighty years now.”

“You know the Naquins?”

A quizzical frown knit his brow. “Clerville and his brood?
Son, I know everybody in this here parish.”

I glanced at the convenience store. “Well, if you have a little
time, I’ll buy you some coffee. I got a couple questions bothering me.”

He cackled. “That’s the one thing I got plenty of, time.”

W slid into a booth next to a plate-glass window overlooking the front drive. Rouly hadn’t lied when he said he knew
everyone. Not a soul passed who didn’t speak, nod, or grunt to
him. He sipped his coffee. “Now, what was it you had on your
mind, son?”

“Looking to find out anything you can tell me about the Naquins upriver from here.”

“What do you want to know?”

“They lived here all their lives?”

“And then some. They is what you call Chitimacha Indians.
They was living here even before our folks come in from Nova
Scotia. Not many of them be left, maybe a hundred or so” He
paused. “Why you be asking?”

That explained the Naquins’ straight black hair instead of the
curly locks of the Cajun. “I met them today. I’m from up around
Church Point, but I couldn’t understand some of their words. They
were a little different from the Cajun French I grew up with.”

Cupping his coffee in two hands, he leaned forward on his
elbows and sipped at the steaming liquid. “That’s the Indian in
them.” He paused and then added, “I remember when Clerville
was born. His daddy, Emile, he throw a big fais-do-do, with barbecue cochon. We be eating hog and dancing for three days”

His words brought my childhood rushing back. I always
looked forward to the fais-do-dos and the barbecued cochon.
Parents gathered in the living room and kitchen, put the kids to
sleep in another room, and danced the night away.

The older kids, like me, usually spent the night in the barn telling ghost stories and playing games such as Cache, cache la
bague, which was “hide a ring,” where players in a circle pass a
ring from one to the other behind their backs, and then on the
command, one must guess who holds the ring. Then there was
Petit mouton, la queue coupee, “little sheep with a cut tail,”
where a player with a handkerchief walks around the circle and
drops it behind someone, who then picks it up and tries to tag
the other player.

Rouly pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and fished one from
the package. He held the cigarette between tobacco-stained
fingers and looked up at me. “They mighty fine folks, living the
life the old ones lived. ‘Course, that life, like the one me, I got,
is disappearing like the red wolf, the oysters, and miles and
miles of wetlands. Why, I can remember when the river was
lined with shacks. Then-” He glanced at the NO SMOKING sign
and snorted. “The riche blanc gens, the rich white people, they
come in, and all change.” He touched a match to his cigarette.
“The Naquins, they good people.”

“Valsin looks to be the oldest.”

Rouly replied, “That he be. That one, he know the swamps
even better than me. Between that one and his alligators, and the
brothers with their shrimp and crabs, the eating houses around
Priouxville and Charenton, they take all the boys can bring in.”

“Alligators? But isn’t there a season on them?”

Rouly cackled. “The Federal and state boys, they learn long
ago not to go in the swamp with Valsin.”

Pondering his reply, I found myself glad Valsin liked me.
“Who owned the house before my friend bought it?”

He cocked his head to one side and looked at me curiously.
“He dead now. Name be Guzik, Harry Guzik. He own the Sparkle
Paradise north of Priouxville.”

I remembered seeing the Sparkle, a fairly modern nightclub
featuring a restaurant, dancing, and slots. “When did he die?”

Rouly pursed his wrinkled lips. “Let me see now.” He ran his bony fingers under his straw hat to scratch his head. “Seems
like sometime around January or February. The weather, it be
mighty cold, best I remember.”

January or February? But Jack had signed the papers in
March. Probably, I told myself, the executor consummated the
matter for Guzik’s estate.

I had a feeling I could trust old Rouly, more or less. After all,
I told myself, if rumors of diamonds on Jack’s property had
been circulating, the old Cajun would have heard of them, and
he had more than enough time all by his lonesome to prowl the
grounds.

He pushed his empty cup aside and started to rise.

“One other question, Mr. Rouly.”

He paused halfway up, then sat back down. “Oui.”

There had been a steady ebb and flow of customers in the
Stop N Shop. So, lowering my voice, I leaned forward. “Have
you ever heard any talk about diamonds on the place?”

I thought the question might surprise him, at least take him
aback, but I was the one surprised when he shrugged and replied as casually as if I’d asked for a drink of water, “Oui. But I
never find any. Me, I finally come to believe old Theriot, he
don’t hide the diamonds there.”

I blinked once or twice, not certain I’d heard him right. “You
mean, you’ve looked for them?”

Without a trace of embarrassment, he replied, “Oui.”

“Didn’t the owners protest?”

He winked, slyly. “I wait till they be gone.” His gall amused
me. He continued, “At first, me, I don’t believe it that much. But a
few years ago, some of the diamonds show up, they say. I don’t
know for sure, but that be what I hear. So, I look. I don’t find
them. Now-” He shrugged. “There are those who still come to
look. Strangers. Nosy ones.”